We’re still sailing along aren’t we? Hopefully, aiming towards more easy-going, yet surprisingly deep waters. It’s all to reveal sights and sounds, mostly, that reveal far more hidden at the surface. Listening to Shigeru Suzuki’s くじらの海 (Living Whales) I’m reminded of this sentiment.
By now, surely, Tokyo’s Shigeru Suzuki is no stranger to your experience. Whether it was his work with Haruomi Hosono and friends in Happy End, Tin Pan Alley, or solo, as Japanese AOR maven in countless iconic City Pop/New Music releases, Shigeru (either as guitarist or songwriter) always brought something interesting to the table.
Of course, what I remember most about Shigeru is his extensive, instrumental, work as instrumental composer, musician, and contributor to a vast collection of (for lack of a better term) “resort music”. If you’ve run across albums in CBS/Sony’s Sound Image or Off Shores Series and the lesser known Sunset Hills Hotel collection from Denon, you’ve probably run across another side of Shigeru, or another sound of Shigeru, that’s quite different from anything (normally) bearing his name.
As a guitarist, Shigeru seemed to have an unending well of ideas for others looking to go far beyond overground pop music styles. Vast, early, folkish and rock-oriented contributions to the works of others in ’70s, transitioned into more forward-thinking jazz-indebted, more rhythmic, and esoteric work for the likes of Amii Ozaki, Taeko Ohnuki, and Keishi Urata.
So, it makes one wonder why it took Shigeru nearly half a decade to put his name onto something. And it appears that something was a particularly spirited contribution to Warner Music’s “Songs Of The Earth” healing music series. For those drawn to the cover, an aerial shot of a humpback, taken by noted Japanese wildlife photographer, Mitsuaki Iwago, would beckon them inside where they’d find music perfectly befitting those gentle mammalian behemoths. It was healing music disguised within a photographic travelog of gorgeous aquatic shots of whales.
Songs like “Introduction: Thanks To The Ocean” sound like a continuation of the ideas hinted at in that other, healing music series from Sony: Aqua Planet. It was a mingling of whale sound and ingenious, aquatically-influenced sound design, trying to rise above existing as mere background music for someone else’s meandering. There would be other tracks like “36℃” that’d ruminate in that same ecosystem of easygoing ambient jazz inhabited by Gontiti and others.
In くじらの海 (Living Whales) I hear the broad musical strokes of melodies from Latin America, the Mediterranean and the sweetness of neoclassical music. What sets this album apart, though, at least for me, are tracks like “Magic Bubbles” with one foot plainly in cheesy mode but in such a way that burgeons on profundity. However, the deepest track on this whole album is “回遊” (otherwise known as “excursion”) a stunning Walearic composition that really hits on all those bits of little-appreciated Japanese voyaging music — which we’ve felt its presence before in the work of Tabo’s Project, Shinsuke Honda, and Atlas (to name precious few).
Although, the music of Shigeru Suzuki in くじらの海 (Living Whales) moves quite effortlessly, its expanses still travel quite deep. What else can I say? It’s that late summer vibe.